Tokenistic “One and Done” Approach by FTSE firms Criticised

The latest figures from the government-backed Hampton-Alexander review of women who occupy a seat on the Board of companies shows that 32.1% of Board positions across the top 100 listed firms in the UK in 2018 were held by women. This is a vast improvement on just 12.5% back in 2011.

However, a number of companies have been chastised for only having a single woman in their top leadership team, with the review warning against a “ tokenistic ” attitude within some companies.

Sir Philip Hampton, Chair of the review, warned that there were still too many firms with only one woman on their board, and four companies in the FTSE 250 which had no women at all on their Board.

The review also found and then named four companies, namely Daejan Holdings, TR Property Investments, Ferrexpo and Kainos Group, all still had male-only Boards, all on the FTSE 100, and that 14 companies had not responded to letters jointly written by the review and Investment Association outlining their concerns in relation to the lack of diversity on their boards.

Hampton added that “we are expecting to see good progress in the number of women appointed into senior leadership roles this year”, therefore only time will tell to see whether this number will rise.